Mourning and Inner Exile: a Poetics of Self-strangeness in Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In Notes on Grief (2021), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie transforms the intimate experience of mourning into a profound exploration of otherness.The death of her father deeply rooted in Igbo memory and culture reveals grief as both an individual wound and a site of existential displacement.This study examines how Adichie constructs grief as a foreign territory, where language falters, rituals dissolve, and identity becomes estranged from itself.The central problem guiding this research is how mourning, beyond its emotional dimension, generates a condition of inner exile that reshapes both the self and linguistic expression.The main objective is to analyze how Adichie's writing transforms loss into a poetics of self-strangeness, turning vulnerability into an aesthetic and philosophical form.The study relies on a multidisciplinary theoretical framework combining psychoanalytic approaches to mourning (Freud, Kristeva), postcolonial reflections on exile and displacement (Said, Mbembe), and aesthetic theories of fragmentation and testimony (Barthes, Derrida, Caruth).Methodologically, it employs a close textual and narratological analysis of Notes on Grief, focusing on narrative fragmentation, linguistic disruption, and representations of bodily and cultural alienation.Findings reveal that Adichie's fragmented prose mirrors the ruptures of bereavement: the dislocated syntax, silences, and ellipses embody the impossibility of linguistic mastery over loss.The author becomes a stranger to herself, to her language, and to the rituals denied by distance.Ultimately, the study demonstrates that Notes on Grief constructs grief as both a personal and collective exile a poetics of vulnerability where writing itself becomes a fragile form of survival.
Source: Kurukan Fuga
DOI: 10.62197/mmfj4695
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4415194708
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